So tonight I played my first two games with the guard and they were pretty crushing.

I felt a little weird about playing with unpainted stuff since I REALLY try not to… but this weekend one of my mates will be borrowing my Wolves, so I wanted to get a game or two in with the guard to see how they’d play.

Luckilly, I read Stelek’s IG Codex review and got some good thoughts from it…. Thankfully, I had bought “the good stuff” — I had to alter my initial list just a little bit though because I had my custom Russ and I realized that demolisher cannons are worth the extra 15 points… who knew?

The list I was running was pretty much a “here’s what I have” list and nothing optimized.. A more serious list would see the addition of a Hydra or two…. But here’s what I ran:

Company Command Squad in Chimera

4x Melta Vets in Chimeras

1x Melta Vets in Vendetta

3x Medusa

3x Leman Russ Demolisher

2x Scout Sentinals with Lascannon and HK (ie, Tauros Venators)

Game I vs Vulkan Space Marines – AKA “cover would have helped”

I played against Crumb… the same guy who brought the 2112 list vs my wolves. I kind of felt like a tool, but I demanded that he go use the army builder in the shop to make sure his list was squared away… Jut to make sure we had a fair game to start with… Part of it was good natured ribbing, part was serious… So he brought a couple of melta squads… a big Rock Termie squad in a LR and another empty LR…. Plus two Vindicators, a LasPlas razorback and a MoF with Conversion beamer.

To be fair, his first two turns of shooting were crap… mine were not… both the Demolisher Russes and the Medusas broke stuff each turn… After turn 1 it was my list vs 1500 of his since the LR and two vindis were broke. Then my Vendetta came in and broke stuff starting on turn 2 cause he pretty much turned his rear armor at me. Next turn he immobilized it (didn’t move flat out) and it got to break something else turn 3. His foot squads would have been more effective if I hadn’t shot them with 9 meltas, a flamer and 6 Multi Laser shots from chimeras. By turn 4, his spirit was broken and conceded the game.

His deployment was across the board… I refuse flanked him. His Termies never got into the game and if we’d gone another turn, they would have been melta and demolished to death.

Game II vs Blood Angels… AKA – “Edward + Bad deployment = Fail”

Josh is running an all foot BA list. I think it has the potential to be nasty.. but he doesn’t use anything to screen and he tends to deploy poorly. (ie, His troops drop and get a melta or two then get shot next turn – FNP is good but not good enough to take all of my shooting) He opted to go first and of course we were playing the Decent of Emo’s game. I later counseled him that by not making me go before he did, I got to set the tone of where we’d play cause I decided to hold everything in reserve. Turn Two everything but 3 units of his Edwards came in (go figure) and he deployed across my back edge in an attempt to block me… So when I came on I just tank shocked him out of the way and sort of went to a refused flank. In Turn 2, the three MVet Chimeras come on the board wiped out a squad. Turn three saw everything of mine but the vendetta come on. I threw a sacrificial unit at the far end of the board (I figured he’d go to it and it would let the Sentinals and Vendetta get some good cross board shots at them – The little guys had outflanked up by his board edge) In turn three I pretty much broke his back. I had tank shocked in order to bunch him up…. then dropped templates…. hehe… (Took 1 half strength shot on the side armor… He took the rest) Also, three meltas a Multi Laser and a Flamer spell “no fun” to a combat squadded jumper unit. After that, he conceded since there was no way he could win… the only units that had a chance were half way across the board and I had just put too much of a beating on him. Funny thing is that he was pretty much calling me out with an expectation of handing me my ass earlier in the evening…

After the game, he and I had a pretty good discussion around tactics with him and why it’s good to bring 2000 points of your army against 750 of mine by being more clever in your deployment….

In analysis I don’t think my list über good… unless you get close, my vets can’t do anything super useful. I’ve got NO close combat and a total of 4 units that can reach out and touch someone every turn. Granted, 3 of the four have a good chance of causing harm and two of the four are pretty resilient… but I don’t think it was all that rough in the big scheme of things. I think my wolf list would trash it pretty handily… So I’ll chalk up tonight to a little bit of luck and capitalizing on my opponents tactical mistakes… And I think the tactical errors were big enough that it really made for an easier game for me…

But for my first time ever playing guard… it felt good to break my opponent’s face just a little bit…. And if doing that once felt good.. twice felt really good.

Music on the way home was the victory mix… I had decided earlier that I would treat myself to warlike music on the way home if I won and “everybody hurts” by REM over and over if I lost… Thankfully, it was a Ride of the Valkyries sort of night….

As I pulled into the driveway, this song was just finishing… Enjoy

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About clt40k

This blog is here to capture my obsession with painting little plastic men... You NEVER really get over being 11...